What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies right to our faces.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Numbers. There's so many of them.

I was previously unaware of Frontpage Milwaukee, a website by UW-Milwaukee journalism students, but I am now impressed by their willingness to ferret out and publish actual numbers--as far as can be determined, because record-keeping is (intentionally?) lousy--about felonies and recidivism among previously-deported (for their first crime...) illegal aliens in Milwaukee.

I've yet to see this topic, much less with numbers, in the J-S Online.

Kind of too bad they couldn't find any non-Mexican examples. I know they exist; in my younger days I had an acquaintance from Britain who overstayed his visa and lived off welfare in Iowa City until he was convicted of domestic assault. But last I heard he hadn't snuck back in because it's kind of hard to sneak in via airplane, and sneaking in over a remote part of the Canadian border is more work than he's willing to do.